yesYou can count your calories, your steps, the number of streams of your favorite songs. And now you can assign a number to how cool you are. See your Aura Points, which is how you calculate your attractiveness. (This is what the kids call charisma, and if you didn’t know that, you just lost 100 Aura points.)
If you ask someone out and they say yes, you lose 100 aura points. If you’re over 19 and still using Snapchat, that’s creepy and suspicious, and you lose 1,000 aura points. If you answered a question confidently in class, but got it wrong, you’re already in the red.
Or so it says in a TikTok explaining the idea. Wall Street Journal report The trend led to a 378% increase in posts on the app with the hashtag #aurapoints between May and June. “I feel like if you have a really, really, really good aura, it translates from online to the other end of the phone,” Hina Sabatine, a 27-year-old content creator from Los Angeles, told the outlet. “Some people have that aura.”
Yes, that elusive “it” quality first used to describe silent-film stars like Clara Bow and Evelyn Nesbitt is being rebranded for the under-30s. Accumulate aura points and you’ll be part of the cool-kids club. Lose them and you’re in danger.
On TikTok, young people share stories of how they’ve won and lost points. Earning aura points usually requires acting in a light-hearted, carefree, yet confident manner. For example, you can earn points by bouncing back quickly from a breakup and not messily sharing the sordid details with your friends. But staying with your cheating partner means minus 100 points, something no aura person would ever tolerate. Some of the stories are ridiculous. (Question: “If I took his toothbrush and rubbed it on a tampon, how many aura points did I lose?” Answer: “If he does something bad, +1000 points.”)
It’s not a very serious system. Still, some creators have used it to represent a dramatic moment of growth. One woman said she gained an aura point when she “left her boyfriend’s coffin so that his ex-girlfriend could show up and get some closure.” It’s a moment of unity at an unimaginable time, and it shows maturity, kindness, and feminine power.
A recent graduate said she “cried her eyes out” when her estranged father, whom she hadn’t seen or spoken to in five years, showed up unexpectedly at her graduation and told her he loved her. “How many aura points did I lose?” she asked, sparking a discussion in the comments section about absentee fathers.
For Julian Baggini, philosopher and co-founder of Philosophers magazine (and contributor to The Guardian), aura points fit with reports of Gen Z’s penchant for astrology and other cosmic belief systems. “There’s a zeitgeist around karma and energy at the moment, which is why it’s expressed in the word aura,” Baggini says. “It seems like both a joke and a weird modern-day code of ethics.”
Aura points may seem like a new phenomenon on TikTok, but some philosophers say elements of the trend stem from ancient history. “This coincides with virtue ethics, which came from Aristotle and was popular in Greek and Roman philosophy,” said John F. Kennedy, an assistant professor of philosophy at Pomona College. Overthinking Podcast. This theory on how to live a moral life emphasizes the quality of a person’s character, rather than how well they follow rules or a higher power.
“The trend is about people thinking about whether their daily lives are aligned with their ideas,” Anderson says. “It encourages us to talk to others about what we’re doing in life and whether it’s a good thing. Aura Points tracks cool factor, but it doesn’t seem to do so in a purely superficial sense.”
Paul Blaschko, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, compares aura points to moral credit, the idea that every “good” action or decision a person makes can potentially offset future “bad” actions or decisions. “These concepts are a way of talking about status, a way of using gamified systems to make certain judgments about someone’s behavior and to invite people in.” [in the comments] To criticize you,” Blaszko added.
Philosopher Alain de Botton describes “status anxiety” as “the anxiety of what other people think of you, of judging you as a success or failure, a winner or a loser.” Blaschko sees aura points as a reflection of this phenomenon. “We constantly question our own self-worth, which is influenced by how we think others see us. Aura points are a way of negotiating this with others,” Blaschko says. “Users are asking others for critique, but by posting their opinions they are also participating in a status transaction.”
Do you understand the philosophy behind this simple TikTok trend? You’ll be awarded 1,000 Aura points.
